My Afternoon, by Chinatownchicken

Holy fuck!

Them there fancy pants restaurants sure is good!

Let me explain. I have the arrrrrresome friend from the long, long ago…my baby By-By. I promised I wouldn’t use his real name (rep to protect) so he’s heretofore known, officially, as By-By. He’s known me since I was a frosted, permed, big-haired teen with mongo earrings and a taste for oversized sweaters over stirrup pants. Mercy. Also, he’s a great prom and homecoming date. He was always trying to turn us on to the high class hooch like Purple Passion.

So, today he was doing a tasting at a restaurant in the Time Warner Center called Per Se for an upcoming event. I was lucky enough to be brought along for the ride. The restaurant was impeccably designed, very modern and beautiful with a view of Central Park. Thank GOD I wore dress pants.

It was a seven course spread, with nibblies to start and nibblies to end. Also, wine. A nice pinot noir. What I recall from my dreamy pinot haze:

• The first nibblet, a cheese puff morsel, had that “explosion of flavor” you’ve heard about—from this point forward, I finally started to understand some of the language from “Top Chef”—flavor profiles!
• Two different pasta dishes, one sweet, one muscular and surprising, the latter being my pick.
• My first taste of fois gras, my first real taste of caviar. The fois gras was Di-Vine. The caviar was fish jelly. Mmph. The caviar was resting on a beet disk which floated atop this mousse that could best be described as buttercracker. I could have licked the little bowl clean. Manners!
• Lobster just isn’t my thing. Even the best lobster, I’m afraid. I just want to batter it in Shake-n-Bake and dip it in a fryer. And, as baby By-By declared, “This ain’t Red Lobster, honey!”
• A nice cut of steak (elusively fatty, nice char) competed with a nice seared section of pork belly. By-by love the pork, I loved the steak.
• The Horror of Cheese. I don’t know cheese, especially fancy cheese, by I’ve had some skirmishes. Today’s was regrettable. First: Some kind of hideous, rotten cheese, very soft, full of the moldy bits. Second: Something reported to have goat cheese associated with it, but there was a creaminess then a Rind of Terror that tasted like licking a bum’s instep. And I know instep, let me tell you.
• Oh glorious peanut butter and chocolate concoction for dessert! It was a lovely way to end (the nibblies of chocolate covered marshmallows and coconut cream delights didn’t hurt, either).

Oh, and finally, the best part of all: An afternoon with my Baby By-By, who was quite impressive in his big boy suit. The party is going to be fab. That place was INSANE.

We got going-away presents, even…I’ll eyeball them for a couple of hours more then chomp them like a piranhafish.

Here’s a mood shot.

Side story: It started raining during the long lunch (we were there from 12:30 to 4:30) and hasn’t yet stopped. When I got home, these two little weirdoes were hanging out on my windowsill.

They didn’t even take off during all of my monkeying about as I tried to get a good picture. They just cocked their little heads and blinked. Blink blink. I usually hate pigeons, but there’s something about drenched pigeons that is completely disarming. I never wondered (or cared) where they went in inclement weather. And here they are, soaked and scrunched up tight on my sill. I think I like them better like this because they kind of look like crows. And crows, as we all know, are the cutest evar.